Mr. President,
Arjen
Although it hurts me to write these words above a letter to you, there they are: Mister President. Maybe you’ve seen the little video that Arjen Lubach [ar’yen loo’back] made for you about the Dutch and their five square acres of land; he forgot to mention a few key points on how to deal with these people who see themselves as ‘merchants and preachers’.
Loo back
Basically, Dutch politicians are pushovers. All you need to do is invite them over for breakfast at the White House and a photo-op, and they will be your staunchest ally. And mind you – Dutch breakfast consists of a few slices of bread with cheese from the local discount supermarket, washed down with fairly weak coffee and / or milk. Nothing fancy. The whole thing, including the photo-op and the talk, won’t take more than an hour if our leaders aren’t too star-struck to do any real business.
JP Balkenende and GW Bush
Let me give you an example. Here’s Prime Minister Balkenende visiting George W. Bush at the White House in 2003. Now Bush in those days wasn’t exactly the most popular leader on the planet, but our li’l preacher boy was over the moon when he called him one of the ‘leaders of Europe’. And mind you, old Dubya did not give Balkenende the ranch treatment – you know, taking him out to his ranch in Texas like he did with Vicente Fox, Silvio Berlusconi, Ariel Sharon, Tony Blair or John Howard. Hell no, the ranch was for Bush’ special friends and our ‘leader of Europe’ just wasn’t very special.
And Barack Obama? Well he took the cue from Bush and invited Balkenende over for breakfast in 2009. Our Prime Minister spent a total of 24 hours on flights up and down the Atlantic, just to spend two hours with Presidents, and fix a deal that made his Foreign Minister the head of NATO. I won’t trouble you with his name which, in English, sounds like something you might find when you dismantle your loo. But you and I, we’re men of the world, we know what the Secretary General of NATO is worth, right? If it isn’t in an American uniform, it commands diddly-squat.
So there you have it. Invite Mark Rutte to the White House for breakfast, give him the illusion that he is important, and he’ll even polish your shoes for you. He’ll be mentioning some stuff under his breath about human rights or other such Leftist crap, because Parliament will force him to, but never mind that – just nod politely and promise nothing. If you throw in some international function for Stef Blok, Mark might even mow the South Lawn for ya while you work on dismantling democracy and freedom in the United States and the world.
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